Guest Post: How to Improve Your Customer Experience in E-commerce
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With the proliferation of online retailers comes a greater need for innovative strategies to keep customers coming back for more.
As a business owner, you need to ensure your customers have a positive experience whenever they shop online.
Did you know that 73% of customers prefer companies that value their time?
This is why more and more companies adopt customer service solutions like enterprise communication tools to engage customers efficiently and handle customer interactions across different channels.
Let’s look at some effective ways online stores can implement to improve customer experience.
9 Ways to Improve E-commerce Customer Experience
Using E-commerce Chatbots
Chatbots are revolutionizing e-commerce and empowering merchants to improve customers' browsing and purchasing experiences. Customizing your chatbots to reflect the uniqueness of your business will set you apart from the competition and make your consumers feel appreciated.
Global Market Insights predicts that by 2024, the global market for chatbots will be worth more than $1.34 billion. Chatbots help e-commerce by simplifying complex interactions and automating repetitive customer service processes.
Chatbots can learn about site visitors and recommend products. This data allows you to tailor product pages based on customers’ interests and demands.
H&M's chatbot, for instance, is available 24/7 to answer frequently asked questions and help buyers find the product they’re looking for. To narrow down their search, buyers can upload a photo from their camera roll or enter a keyword or product number. They can also specify whether they’re looking to purchase an item online or in-store.
Creating a Loyalty Program
It’s crucial for companies to create a loyalty program to build lasting relationships with their customers.
As a matter of fact, 82% of companies agree that retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring new customers. While 75% of consumers also agree that they want some reward for their loyalty to their respective brands.
That’s why over 90% of US companies use customer loyalty programs in order to retain loyal customers.
Therefore, you need to give something in return to your customers to survive and thrive in the competitive and saturated market. It will not only increase your brand engagement but also increase your ROI.
Let’s take a look at Newegg. With its EggPoints Program, customers earn EggPoints when they buy certain items that meet the criteria. They can use these points to get a discount on their next purchase.
Optimizing Your Mobile Website’s Navigation
Optimizing a mobile-responsive website navigation menu is also a great way to deliver a dynamic customer experience in e-commerce.
As a matter of fact, mobile traffic generates 58.72% of website traffic, while desktop generates only 39.18% of website traffic.
Thus, you can say that consumers today are most likely to engage with those e-commerce websites that provide a better mobile website experience. That starts with a dynamic and highly responsive mobile website’s navigation bar. That, in turn, will help you improve your mobile conversion rate.
For example, Ferrum Pipe delivers a clean yet effective mobile navigation menu. It leaves out all the unnecessary navigation options to make the mobile experience simpler and more convenient for the users. If you still want to provide additional information in your mobile navigation, then it’s better to incorporate them in the website's footer.
Creating High-Quality Content
Create educational content for your customers. Providing useful and entertaining educational information can result in a better understanding of your services or products. It might be an instruction manual, a video demonstration, or a live webcast.
When customers begin to recommend your company to others, you know your content is delivering a compelling customer experience.
Adding product and service descriptions can improve your platform's user experience. Entice readers with HD photos and 4K videos. If customers can see exactly what they're getting, they'll trust you even more.
Au Lit FineLinens is a great case study of how an online store can effectively use quality content for their business to improve the e-commerce customer experience. They offer customers everything they need for a restful night's sleep and educate them by maintaining a blog where they share useful insights and posts with readers about the best strategies for enhancing the quality of their sleep.
Implementing Post-Purchase Survey
Post-purchase surveys assist in gathering quantitative and qualitative feedback from customers. You may easily change them regularly, allowing you to cover a wide range of topics or focus on one.
Today, more than ever, it's crucial to keep your existing customers happy; in fact, repeat customers spend 67% more in the 31-36 months after their first purchase.
Apple has found post-purchase surveys to be extremely beneficial for gaining customer data. It even has a dedicated page on their website for product feedback. When you select a specific product, you’ll be redirected to a feedback form. On the form, you can specify the type of feedback whether it’s a feature request, bug report, performance, or software/hardware compatibility.
Leveraging Social Media
The term "e-commerce social media" refers to promoting online shops through social media platforms. This process is also called ‘social selling.’
Using social media, online shops may increase their visibility, gain followers, and ultimately, make more purchases. Businesses can take advantage of social media to increase brand awareness.
Almost any company can gain from advertising on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as there are 4.74 billion social media users around the world.
Pinterest's promoted pins are put to good use by MVMT watches. It all started with the popular fashion accessories brand uploading a product catalog for Pinterest based on the preference of their target audience. That, in turn, helped them achieve higher conversion rates at a minimal cost.
Once they identified which of their product catalogs performed great in the past, they curated another catalog based on that data and uploaded it to their product feed.
Offering Omni-Channel Shopping
Supporting customers in an omnichannel manner means catering to their needs regardless of the channel they use to interact with your business.
Personalization is at the core of the omnichannel strategy, resulting in a streamlined and consistent experience for the customer. Online stores should be able to allow their customers to easily switch between platforms and purchase products using different payment methods.
Starbucks rewards app is probably the best example of delivering an omnichannel experience. You can reload the rewards card via a number of channels, including in-store, website, or even on the app.
Whenever you make changes to your rewards card, it will automatically get updates across all channels. If you’re about to buy a coffee and realize you don’t have sufficient credit, all you need to do is reload the rewards card, then it will get updated in real-time by the time you swipe your card to get your coffee.
Enabling Mobile Shopping
M-commerce, or mobile commerce, is a subset of e-commerce that enables consumers to shop online using a mobile device rather than a desktop or a laptop.
Let’s look at how Sephora is improving customer experience. Customers can virtually try makeup with the help of Sephora's Virtual Artist mobile app, thanks to the implementation of face recognition technology.
The mobile app allows you to use a wide range of products, including eyeshadows, lip colors, lipstick, and more, to test how they would look on you. Thus, providing an experience of a complete virtual makeover.
Not only that, but you can also try out two different ranges of makeup products at the same time to compare and find out which one is best before you make up your mind to purchase.
Moreover, if you find it difficult to apply virtual makeup, you can also learn from their tutorials. Once completely satisfied with the makeup, you can finally buy your favorite makeup products right from the app.
Personalize Product Pages
Product pages need customization. In a conventional marketing funnel, buyers who view your products are mostly likely to move down the funnel and buy. It's your best conversion tool.
Ecommerce doesn't offer in-person product testing like a traditional store. That's why online customers require lots of information before buying. They consider price, ratings, product descriptions, and customer reviews.
Research says that 80% of consumers are likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.
Brands like Volkswagen offer their potential customers an interactive user experience. The popular German vehicle manufacturing company doesn’t simply list all the features of the cars; instead, it provides the process of actually building the car yourself.
Going through the process gives you the option of choosing different features in an ideal car. Then, you will see the preview of that car along with its total price.
Conclusion
Customer service is just as important as the quality of your product or brand, so make sure to prioritize it. Keep in mind that your customers are the key to your successful e-commerce venture.
You must meet your customers where they are and make their shopping experience easier—from finding your products online to the checkout process and beyond. This way, your customers will be happier, your sales will increase, and you will significantly improve your ROI.
About the Author
Mark Dacanay is a Digital Marketing Professional who has been working with RingCentral offering cloud-based services for more than five years. He is obsessed with anything about the cloud – the technology, not the fluffy stuff in the sky. You can reach him through LinkedIn.
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